I Get My Kicks For Free
by Ayakaishi Fei
Summary: How do you know if you're alive if everyday you feel more and more like you're dying inside? Everybody has imperfections, but not everybody deals with it by carving their arms up. Hikari's POV.


Title: I Get My Kicks For Free  
  
Author: FireDemon  
  
Email: Ken_Dai_Love@hotmail.com  
  
Rating: PG13  
  
Warnings: Self harm. Hikari hurts herself, on purpose. Don't like don't read. Also, there's a reference to shounen ai (gayness) and a few swear words. Vague Kensuke.  
  
Category: Angst. Drama.  
  
Summary: Kari has a problem, a very real problem to a lot of people. As always for me this is an attempt to exorcise my feelings without harming myself. The title comes from the song I was listening to writing this. I figured despite it's chirpiness it kinda fit, Kari's kicks are for free. Enjoy.  
  
Kari ran to her room and slammed the door behind her, her dark hair flew around her face as she barricaded the door with her wardrobe and then dropped to her knees to search for something below her bed.  
  
Crimson brown eyes lit with satisfaction as she pulled a pile of magazines and a pair of scissors from a neat stack beneath the head of her bed.  
  
Nobody knew about the magazines, or the scissors, or Kari's obsessive little habit. Her fingers nimbly flipped through the first magazine. Her eyes settled on a model whose shimmering golden locks looked like something from a shampoo ad. Cruelly she scratched out the girls face, and cut the hair out.  
  
She flipped through till she found a girl with perfect wide baby blue eyes and cut them out, then tore at the girls mousy brown hair with her scissors, laughing as the girls picture suffered beneath her cruel ministrations.  
  
By the time night fell she'd managed to create the perfect female, perfect bosom, perfect waist, perfect eyes, perfect lips. perfect.  
  
Running a finger over the girl she'd created Kari scowled, she could see her reflection in the mirror across the room. Her fingers closed instinctively over the scissors and she angrily slashed at her arm. The scissors slashed across her pale skin, once, twice, blood welling and dripping onto the picture she'd made. Crimson eyes widened, and Kari hastily staunched the blood with the tissues from her nightstand.  
  
"Damn it. Not again!" Kari cursed, one of these days she was going to get caught, and how was she going to explain. 'I slipped?' The other still fading scars would definitely give evidence to the contrary.  
  
She didn't cut because it felt good, or even because she liked pain. Sometimes it was punishment, because she wasn't perfect, because she wasn't blond haired or blue-eyed or because she still looked like she was 12 despite the fact that in 5 days she'd be 17. But mostly it was simply because after a week of school where she was neither popular nor ostracised she needed to feel the pain simply to confirm she was alive. It had started as punishment.  
  
Daisuke had commented on her lack of a figure jestingly, claiming to the digidestined jokingly that when he was younger he'd obviously liked her for her boyish figure, during a conversation on his sexuality. Takeru and Miyako had laughed, given that Daisuke was gay and head over heels for Ken, but Hikari had realised it was true - She'd been almost 15 and a half and she lacked anything that could even be considered 'womanly curves'.  
  
She'd cut then, because she hated her body with it's flat ugly surfaces, and it's boyish chest. She didn't always cut though, sometimes she skipped meals, to punish her ugly stupid unfeminine hips, Mimi had said that they'd grow in their own time, but less then a week off being 17 Kari's body resembled that of a 13 year old boy.  
  
She pulled the tissues away and checked that it had stopped bleeding then pulled on a long sleeved top. Cutting made her feel good, or rather, alive, then she'd feel guilty for feeling good, and because she felt guilty she'd want to cut again. It was a vicious circle.  
  
Clearing away everything and placing it all back beneath her bed Kari walked out to join her family for dinner. For today at least her secret would be safe, although whether that was a good or bad thing, Kari couldn't tell.  
  
~*~  
  
Tai looked up as his younger sister walked out to join the family for dinner, she was late... again.  
  
He sometimes wondered what she did when she barricaded her door and remained in her room for hours, although he knew his mother simply assumed she was studying or reading.  
  
"Sorry, I got caught up in what I was doing. This looks delicious okaasan."  
  
Taichi prodded his food with his fork. Hikari's last comment was quite obviously meant as a distraction. His mother had decided to be inventive again. Hopefully this... whatever it was wouldn't be seasoned with marijuana again.  
  
His mother tended towards the bizarre, and didn't seem to realise that giving her children marijuana as a seasoning was a bad thing.  
  
When he was younger he'd just thought that like her Tofu Sundaes and wheat- grass cookies it was unusual but not unheard of. Now he simply accepted that his mother was mildly insane and relatively drug-fucked and loved her anyway.  
  
His mother was not a bad person, not a druggie, she simply had problems which she tried to resolve in the wrong way. Taichi's father had forbidden her to see a psychiatrist, possibly because many of her problems stemmed from his actions in their youth, and she had agreed, probably because admitting to her problems would mean losing her children.  
  
And Taichi and Hikari had never said anything, because by the time they realised their parents actions weren't normal, they were also old enough that they knew telling anyone would mean splitting up their family.  
  
Taichi sometimes wondered why he and Hikari had turned out so balanced. He supposed the digital world had a lot to do with it. Having responsibility thrust upon had made him grow up and realise he had to be accountable for his own actions. Which meant when he got back he no longer let his parents influence the most important decisions he made.  
  
Hikari let her knife and fork clatter onto her empty plate, "Well, that was delicious, I really must go have my shower now. Early night and all that. I've been a little tired lately with everything."  
  
Taichi watched his sister go worriedly, Hikari was so... well perhaps not young, she was almost 17, but small. He worried about her. She seemed to skip meals more often then she should have, and she seemed withdrawn, more so then even when their father had been living at home all the time.  
  
Perhaps he was simply jumping at shadows but he was afraid that his younger sister had a problem. A problem that she hadn't wanted his help with.  
  
He sighed, as his gaze caught on the harmless dinner knife on Hikari's plate... and he shook his head. Hikari was smarter then that.  
  
Self-harm might feel like it was helping, but Hikari was a clever girl, if that was her problem she wouldn't keep doing it for long. Cutting was stupid, it didn't solve anything, and the longer you did it, the deeper had to cut to feel the pain. To achieve release.  
  
Taichi tore his eyes away from the knife, why was he even thinking about Hikari and cutting in the same sentence. Hikari was smarter then that. And Taichi would have noticed.  
  
TBC... (maybe)  
  
A/N: Should I continue? Should I leave it as a one shot? Should I burn the whole thing and never again write such rot?  
  
This, much like nearly everything else I write, was an attempt to exorcise my demons, or something like that.  
  
Cutting is never a good thing, it doesn't help. It doesn't take away the monotony of living, it just gives you a monotony of scars. 


End file.
